Introducing Writers at Home

Writers at Home: Daily Online Literature & Lessons from The Cabin

Because you have an interest in how this unique moment of social distance is being written.

Because our anxiety is collective and less frightening when it’s named.

The Cabin has invited writers from our community and beyond to publish poems, essays, lessons, prompts, and stories with us to help us all through the isolation, fear, and confusion.

Tune in Monday through Friday, today through June, for words to feel (and think) with — and some selections from our Writers in the Schools residencies thrown in.

*NEW* Reading something swell that you think everyone should read? (Or at least folks who like the same kind of books that you do?) Add it to our Community Crowdsourced Reading List and scroll through to find suggestions from other readers!

“The neighbors want to talk to us for the first time since we moved in. They offer me arugula from their garden. I want to say, I’m good, I still go to the grocery store. Instead, I ask them something I’ve been wondering for five years. What is the name of your cat who naps every day in my yard?”

“He ticked from station to station as the streets began to fill, and fill further – food trucks, old women being escorted arm in arm through crosswalks and the automatic doors of supermarkets and chocolate shops and taquerias, blooms torn from dogwoods, cherry trees, maples. It was soothing.”

“That being said, I’ve taken comfort in avoiding people or not looking directly at strangers because finally, this is acceptable and encouraged behavior. I don’t have to pretend that I am friends with the store clerk, and act engaged when they ask if I’ve had that brand of mac and cheese before.”

“Every night I dream about Survivor—where all the stresses of my waking life are reimagined on an island in my mind. One night, I am at tribal council with my two dogs and must choose which one of them to vote off the island…”

“On one side, there was Bill and he was fighting with Ice Cream. Jim sent the first attack that hit the top of Bill’s head, squishing him and shrinking him by three feet! Then Bill sent his attack, pinning Jim to the floor.”

“Try to really write in the voice that you think this character has or should have. What that may look like is using different phrases and expressions that they would normally use, try to write from their point of view rather than your own.”

“What are you experiencing these days during this pandemic? How is it affecting your bodies, minds, spirits, emotions? What does stress look like for you right now? Feel like? Smell like? Sound, taste like?”

“Everyone is writing now, through emails and texts. I’ll have friends send me the most hilarious texts that light up my life, and though they will never be published or archived they make my life better.”